Indian Pudding
Ingredients:
4 cups milk
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Directions:
Preheat oven to 300° F. Fill the bottom pan of a double boiler with water and bring to a boil. Pour 4 cups of milk into the top pan of your double boiler. Let this come to a boil directly on the burner. Pour the cornmeal into the milk and mix well using a wire whisk. Remove the mixture from heat. Place the top of the double boiler over the bottom pan. Cook the cornmeal mixture for about 20 minutes, mixing often. Remove from heat. Using a fork, whip an egg until it is a pale yellow and frothy. Add it to the cornmeal mixture, along with the molasses, milk, salt, ginger, and cinnamon. Finally mix in the other ingredients into the cornmeal mixture. Empty the contents into a well-oiled 1 1/2 quart baking pan and bake for two hours.
If you notice a hole in the upper left-hand corner of your Farmers' Almanac, don't return it to the store! That hole isn't a defect; it's a part of history. Starting with the first edition of the Farmers' Almanac in 1818, readers used to nail holes into the corners to hang it up in their homes, barns, and outhouses (to provide both reading material and toilet paper). In 1910, the Almanac's publishers began pre-drilling holes in the corners to make it even easier for readers to keep all of that invaluable information (and paper) handy.
3 comments
Although our forebears had to work so much harder for their food and had a lot less choicet; he food they ate was so much healthier than ours is today. We are paying an extremely high price for our convenience and our vast selection – much, much more than most of us realize. Sometimes it is difficult to determine if we have progressed in this area – or just changed. I imagine our forebears had a better understanding that food was something that fueled and nourished the body than we do; today it seems like food is about anything but that life-demanding task!
This is such an interesting topic. It lets us visualize how our great gransparents might have cooked and eaten at home. It shows they had less diverse, more local food crops available (what they or their neighbors could grow in their region), and none of the technology (refrigeration, cookstoves, etc.) that makes it easier for us today. Have you ever thought of writing an article that updates our forebear’s frugality, eschews today’s (mostly unnecessary) technology, and does great things with local, low-tech, earth-friendly ways of cooking and eating? I’d love to read that. I’d love to research and write it as well, so let me know!! LOL
Boy-they really had to work hard to preserve their food.
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